| William Josceyln Arkell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 June 1904 Highworth, Wiltshire, United Kingdom |
| Died | 18 April 1958 (aged 53) Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Residence | United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Jurassic Palaeontology and Stratigraphy |
| Institutions | University of Oxford; University of Cambridge |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
| Doctoral advisor | J. A. Douglas |
| Doctoral students | Anthony Hallam, Michael Howarth |
| Known for | Geology of the Jurassic |
| Notable awards | Mary Clark Thompson Medal (1944) Lyell Medal (1949) |
William Joscelyn Arkell M.A.; D.Phil.; D.Sc.; FGS.; FRS. (9 June 1904 – 18 April 1958) was a British geologist and paleontologist, regarded as the leading authority on the Jurassic Period during the middle part of the 20th century.
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Arkell was born in Highworth, Wiltshire the youngest of a family of seven. His father, James Arkell was a partner in the prosperous family business Arkell's Brewery (which is still family owned today). His mother, Laura Jane Arkell was an artist of notable ability.
He developed a deep love of the English countryside from an early age, gained in no doubt from the long family summer holidays spent at Swanage, Dorset. He was later educated at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his ability in Natural History was recognised and he was able to devote significant time to develop his knowledge of this subject. Indeed, he was a regular prize winner for his Natural History essays, one of which was a treatise on the Dorset Robber Flies (Asilidae). He also privately published a series of poems, Seven Poems, which reflected his love of nature and the outdoors.
In October 1922, at the second attempt (due a failure in Latin), Arkell was admitted to New College, Oxford. He had initially intended to read entomology and despite being tutored by the great Julian Huxley, he decided that his career lay in geology and palaeontology. In 1925, he graduated with First Class Honours in geology. He remained at Oxford University after the award of the Burdett-Coutts research scholarship. His research topic involved the taxonomy of the bivalves from the Upper Jurassic Corallian beds of England. For this and other papers regarding the Jurassic of southern England, he was awarded a DPhil in 1928.
Whilst undertaking his doctoral research, Arkell spent four winter seasons (1926–30) investigating the evidence of Palaeolithic human remains in the Nile Valley of Egypt in association with the University of Chicago. Four notable monographs were the result of this work.
Arkell was awarded a lectureship in geology at New College, Oxford in 1927 and later, in 1929, became a Senior Research Fellow of that College. With little teaching or administrative duties to speak of, Arkell was able to devote almost all his time to research. This culminated with the publication, in 1933, of The Jurassic System of Great Britain. This large, 681 page work critically examined and consolidated all previous work on the Jurassic, including the formations described by the pioneer on British Geology, William Smith in the Nineteenth century. It recognised Arkell as an authority on the Jurassic, which was remarkable given he was only 29.
He also published extensive work on the Upper Jurassic reef deposits (known as the Coral Rag) of England. He was an expert on the use of Jurassic limestones as building materials, publishing a book on the many different types of limestone used in the buildings of Oxford. The often obscure terminology used by miners and quarrymen was clarified by his dictionary of rock terms. Arkell was interested in the tectonic history of Southern England, particularly with reference to the highly folded beds of the Isle of Purbeck. He contributed to reports published by the British Geological Survey, especially around the area of Weymouth and Portland.
The Second World War interrupted his research in 1941 and Arkell worked for the Ministry of Transport in London, when bombing of that city was at its most intense. It was during this period that he became seriously ill, spending five months in hospital following a pneumothorax operation.
Following demobilisation at the end of the war, Arkell accepted a Senior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, holding an office at the Sedgwick Museum. It was during this time that Arkell began to work on the use of ammonites as Zone fossils in Jurassic stratigraphy and became the leading expert on this specialised area. He was inundated with fossils for identification, particularly from oil companies. As a consequence, he travelled widely in the Middle East examining many Jurassic exposures from this area.
Arkell then consolidated his knowledge of the Jurassic and published Jurassic Geology of the World in 1956. The large, detailed volume to this day remains a classic and influential text.
Arkell married Ruby Percival in 1929 and purchased a large house at Cumnor, near Oxford before relocation to Cambridge in 1949. Together they had three sons, born between 1932 and 1937. They also established a holiday home at Ringstead Bay in Dorset. Due to his connection with the family brewery business, Arkell was independently wealthy.
Despite his large frame and height (he was 6 feet 4 inches tall), Arkell was never a well man. In the autumn of 1956, he suffered a severe stroke which left him partially paralysed and with double vision. This was to provide a detriment to his Sunday hobby of water colour painting. Despite this his determination to continue his work and correspondence at Cambridge University continued. However, he suffered a second stroke on April 18, 1958 and died several hours later.
Arkell received a D.Sc from the University of Oxford in 1934. In 1944 he was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.[1] He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1947. Arkell was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1949, and the Leopold von Buch medal of the German Geological Society in 1953.